


Little Letters

by Arazsya



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Letters, M/M, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23845000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Tjelvar attends his first excavation since the world began again.
Relationships: Edward Keystone/Tjelvar Stornsnasson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47
Collections: Rusty Quill Gaming Exchange 2020





	Little Letters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalgalen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalgalen/gifts).



It’s not as if he’s never left before. If he had been more inclined towards the dramatic, Tjelvar might have said that he’s had a life made up of leavings. His family first, for all that their endlessly supportive letters and cards have always seemed to believe he’ll come back one day. Then his university, when they’d refused to fund his further searches for Hannibal’s tomb without even looking at his proposal. At least half a dozen potential sponsors, who’d all wanted artefacts that belonged in museums for their private collections. He’d regretted none of it. Never looked back.

There’s no reason why Edward Keystone should be any harder. Easier, if anything – he’d outright told Tjelvar he should go, even after he’d found out that the Church wouldn’t let him accompany him. It’s just one season, one first tentative dig as the world recovers itself from the receded blue veins. Not even out of the country.

Still, he sits at his fold-out desk, after a day of examining the area and marking out provisional trenches, and he aches. There’s a cold under the skin of his shoulder, where Edward is prone to touching him in fleeting efforts at support, and it won’t go away no matter how many layers he wears.

He’d worked like a puppet again, barely acknowledging his colleagues and sitting silent in their discussions. All his attempts to convince himself that it’s because he’s just never been _that_ interested in Neolithic Britain are laughed bitterly out of his head like the lies they are. After all, he should hate behaving so mechanically after what had happened, but it doesn’t hurt like it should – the blue-tinted memories of his time out of control have lost their savagery under the warmth of Edward’s guided sunlight.

Edward had found him, in the aftermath. An abandoned shell like all the rest of them, unable to quite drag his eyes away from the hands that hadn’t been his in too long, so far from normality that he couldn’t believe in it anymore. Edward had taken him home, and been nothing but kind until he’d found his way back to himself, even when Tjelvar had snarled and snapped for the sake of having something to attack. Just _helping_ , and was it any wonder that Tjelvar’s old tinder-spark of irritation had fanned into something else entirely?

There’s an irregular splinter starting to peel out from the edge of the desk – Tjelvar picks at it in an effort to focus. He needs to write up what they’d done that day, but he can scarcely even bring it to mind. When he tries to picture the lines of their potential trenches on the map, he comes up with the new scars that Edward had never talked about. Dates in history are nothing to the number of days before the excavation ends. Questions about why the settlement had been abandoned just lead back to wondering what it was, exactly, he had left behind.

He’d kissed Edward, the night before he’d left. It had been a gentle evening, unusually warm for the time of year, and they’d been sitting out in what Edward had decided he was going to wrangle into a garden, keep himself busy when he wasn’t required at the Church. The light had been golden, the shadows of all the stubborn bramble patches that Edward refused to attack with Tjelvar’s machete softened, and he had been having doubts again. About the excavation, about everything. He’d been halfway through explaining that he wasn’t even technically _qualified_ , and Edward had interrupted him with a hand on his arm. Told him in a steady, certain voice that he was going to be all right.

Kissing him had felt like the right thing to do, until it hadn’t. Tjelvar had excused himself, left Edward sitting wearing one gardening glove and a dazed expression, then fled for the dig in the morning before Edward could return from the early service. He’s not even sure he’ll go back there after all this, or if he’ll just keep running, away from what he hopes might be something.

The splinter digs into Tjelvar’s thumb. He curses, pulls his hand back. Work, he insists, but the idea of it tastes like disdain in his mouth. Still, it has to be done. He wants more excavations, more history that isn’t riddled with blue, and for that he’ll need the reputation he’s worked so hard for intact, not tarnished by time spent moping and inattentive.

He snatches at his pen, pulls the cap off and scratches it across the paper with enough force that he could probably read it off the desk underneath. More than he can from the sheet, anyway – it doesn’t write. Curling his lip, Tjelvar starts to unscrew it, trying to remember where in his bag he’d packed his spare ink, and something falls out onto the map. It’s a note, tightly folded, spattered in places, but unfurls easily enough when he tries.

The handwriting is one he knows well. Careful print, with the occasional quirk from where someone had once unsuccessfully tried to beat it into cursive.

 _I miss you_ , it says. _Don’t stay up too long._

Tjelvar holds it, for a while. His head’s quiet, for the first time since he’d left, since he’d kissed Edward. Then he curls the note carefully back into his pen, and goes to bed without changing the ink. He’s always been prone to working late, and it’s well past midnight already.

Over the next few days, more notes fall from his things, thick as apple blossom. There’s a line of poetry, tucked into his rucksack, a heavy mark on the paper at the start like Edward had thought about crossing it out, and decided against it. _Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?_ and then, on the reverse, _No, Apollo might not like that._ After that one, he spends his time digging with the others fighting a smile, wondering if it had been meant as a joke or a compliment or both, what he’d prefer. The blessings of Apollo (and a hope that he won’t need them) are tucked inside his shield. Around his omnitool, a rambling treatise on whether he really needs good luck to find something that makes him happy if he’s the best (which he is, but if he would like good luck he can have some). His camp stove nearly burns a one-sided discussion about fruit trees.

It’s easier to muster enthusiasm for his work when every piece of equipment he’s brought with him might contain something from Edward. The atmosphere on the dig changes with it, archaeologists who must have been through everything that Tjelvar had no longer _watching_ each other, actual laughter around their camp in the evenings.

On the fourth day, their trenches go deep enough that they start to bring up finds, and that evening Tjelvar sits at his desk with a renewed sense of energy – he opens the blank journal he’d brought with him, and another note falls out. When he looks, they’re stuffed in between the pages like bookmarks, enough of them that the cover has been forced up at an angle.

 _Tjelvar_ , it says, and he pauses, takes a moment to find Edward’s familiar voice in his head before he goes on. None of the others have started with his name – he wonders if that’s significant, wants to analyse it, study the writing to see if there’s more meaning he can read in it. Not as much as he wants to carry on. _I know you were sad to leave – that’s all right. I wrote you some things so you’ll know what’s happening. I hope you don’t mind. It’s only the first day so probably mostly the same at the moment. I’ve still got to take a lot of the weeds out of the garden. I quite like the dandelions, but Hamid says they’ll grow just fine in the grass._

The first day. Tjelvar winces – Edward had assumed he’d be writing at the end of every day. Instead, he’d left it for days on end, given his work no meaningful focus. Pushes the sting of it away, and reads through the letters that he has to catch up on. Edward wouldn’t judge him for it.

He talks about what he hopes for from the garden, how he thinks the Church’s rebuilding efforts might be going, says when Einstein’s told him the sky will be clear enough to look at the stars, in case Tjelvar wishes to join him. It’s not sparkling prose by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s _Edward’s_ , and he can fill in the rest of it himself.

The letters tell him that he’ll be home before the autumn colour, that Edward will press the spring flowers for him so he doesn’t miss them, that there’ll still be plenty to do when he gets back, and they can do it together.

Tjelvar reads until the day he’s on, then quietly closes the journal that he’d thought would be empty. He’ll go through the rest of it in its time. For the moment, he blinks something out of his eyes, then flips back to the first page, and begins his own entry.

 _My dearest Edward_ , he writes. _I have been very glad to find your letters, and I look forward to seeing you again at the end of the excavation – I would appreciate it if you would consider accompanying me on further expeditions once the Church is fully restored. I hope there is no issue with it if I respond here, and provide you with this ledger on my return, as the postal service has not fully returned to business here. The dig has started well, and I find I am far happier to discuss it if I am to speak of it with you…_


End file.
